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The Barrenness of Anti-Darwinism

Auster has been on the rampage against evolutionary psychology, lately. Most recently, under the title "The Barrenness of Darwinism", he quotes with approval Carol Iannone's question, "When Thomas Edison spent months experimenting with hundreds of different materials in his quest to create a workable incandescent light bulb, why--according to the evolutionists--did he do it? In order to find more mates? In order to spread his genes? In order to gain status, so as to find more mates and spread his genes?"

Well, *sigh*, no, Carol & Larry. Most "evolutionists" would offer pretty much the same surface-level explanation for Edison's strange behavior as anybody else: among other things, he was very smart, very determined, very creative, and avid of wealth, fame & power.

It's at the next level down that "evolutionists" start saying something interesting & different:

Why are people smart? Why are they determined? Why are they creative? Why are they avid of wealth, fame & power (to the extent that they are)?

Because, up to a point, intelligence, determination, creativity, and the desire for wealth, fame & power were qualitites that tended to result, in the circumstances of human evolution, in greater inclusive fitness - I.e., genes that contributed to intelligence, determination, creativity, and the desire for wealth, fame & power tended to spread, while genes that detracted from same tended to die out.

It's a great puzzle to me why sharp gals & guys like Carol & Larry seem to find this rather obvious point so difficult to grasp.

Comments (108)

'Up to a point'

In Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, the foreign editor of newspaper would say 'Up to a point' to the megalomaniac owner when the owner was in fact wrong.

Steve Burton's explanation is rather explaining away. He must know that there exists no material explanation to consciousness and human intellect and there exist philosophical arguments in support of the immateriality of human intellect.

More, the materialist explanations do not explain even all of animal behaviour. A lot of what is lumped under 'sexual selection' is pretty dubious. Why do female peacocks prefer males with longer tails?

genes that contributed to intelligence, determination, creativity, and the desire for wealth, fame & power tended to spread, while genes that detracted from same tended to die out.

That only makes sense if the genes that contribute to stupidity, lethargy, destructiveness, and abhorrence of wealth, fame and power did not exist. But obviously, since we see humans with all those traits, they did not "die out."

It's a great puzzle to me why sharp gals & guys like Carol & Larry seem to find this rather obvious point so difficult to grasp.

It's a great puzzle to the rest of us why proponents of evolutionary psychology can't seem to grasp the obvious point that any personality trait that exist must either (a) be beneficial to survival, (b) have no effect on survival, (c) be detrimental but hasn't yet succeeded in killing off the species. Since there is no way to tell which of the three categories any particular trait falls into, it is the height of silliness to claim any particular trait has lead to "greater inclusive fitness." In other words, their is no objective standard by which evolutionary psychology can make any non-subjective claims.

I interpreted it as a criticism of the materialist reductionism of evolutionary psychologists, who, Auster believes (correctly or not), tend not to be so modest in their claims by qualifying them with phrases like "up to a point," and if they do so, the other possible explanations are likewise materialist reductionist: "the fact is that proponents of Darwinian evolution or evolutionary biology use the theory to explain EVERYTHING about life, and EVERYTHING about human beings."

As Uncle Leo famously said: "It is safer to try to understand the low in the light of the high than the high in the light of the low. In doing the latter one necessarily distorts the high, whereas in doing the former one does not deprive the low of the freedom to reveal itself as fully as what it is." (Note: he said that it was safer, not necessarily wiser/truer in every instance.)

I opened a book around here at random the other day and found a drawing of narwhals. It tried to "explain" their long horns or tusks or whatever they are called in evolutionary terms. At least, I think it was supposed to be an explanation. It was thought worth putting on paper, anyway. It started by saying that the horns are evolutionarily advantageous because the male narwhals fight with one another for females using the horns. Then the author felt driven in honesty to admit that the horns have some disadvantages in that they are very heavy and unwieldy and I forget what-all else. He concluded by saying that the gene for the horn must have been perpetuated because the survival and reproductive benefits of it outweighed the disadvantages.

I was so glad to have that explained. Now I understand so much better how the narwhal got his horn.

Lydia, I think a theory should be judged on its merits, not on the bad explanations of some of its defenders. I think Jerry Fodor has demolished the whole "selection-for" category of explanations, including, I think but am not sure, Steve Burton's explanation above. See Fodor's article in the LRB a few years back, and the subsequent exchange. But mostly that says that evolutionists should be a lot more careful about how they talk about evolution.

Re Auster, Steve's right. He's a smart guy who's stubbornly stupid on evolution. It's a matter of will, not plain ignorance. I've tried to point out some of his fallacious reasoning to him, as have lots of others. I don't know of a more polite way to say this: the guy's a crank. A smart and often insightful crank, but a crank.

Aaron, that "selection for" set of explanations has been an absolute staple of evolutionary "explanation" and is what Lewontin presumably meant in his admirably frank reference to "just so stories." And as you note, it's right here in the main post.

It seems to me that to take something that has been a staple of the entire genre, if I may call it that, of writing in a particular scientific area and then treat it as some sort of sub-standard exemplar which opponents are unfair for rebutting is itself not academically just. A theory that trumpets a particular type of explanation for many decades and then morphs in such a way as to reject that type of explanation, while all the while insisting that the *essence* of the theory has remained unchanged, has the marks of ad hocness.

Evolution has had more than enough time to weed out the women who kill their own children (a fitness fail by definition). Yet they are all over the place.

Evolution has had more than enough time to weed out homosexual genes. Homosexuality is, by definition, a fitness fail. Yet homosexuality is on the increase.

Evolution has had more than enough time to weed out a huge variety of self-destructive and non-reproductive behaviors, yet these behaviors are flourishing. By evidence of fitness, Evolution is clearly false.

I can only conclude that, in the face of all the contrary evidence, and the persistence of their fantastical beliefs, Darwinists are fanatically insane and idiotic.

"he was very smart, very determined, very creative, and avid of wealth, fame & power."
- Those last three points are most applicable, I think, as, coupled with dishonesty, they also easily explain why he screwed over Tesla at the beginning.

It started by saying that the horns are evolutionarily advantageous because the male narwhals fight with one another for females using the horns. Then the author felt driven in honesty to admit that the horns have some disadvantages in that they are very heavy and unwieldy and I forget what-all else. He concluded by saying that the gene for the horn must have been perpetuated because the survival and reproductive benefits of it outweighed the disadvantages.

It could also be that the horn simply didn't matter that much for the survival of the species. The Wikipedia reference suggests that there is little actual evidence of narwhales using the tusk aggressively. That would make sense because wielding a 2-3m tusk with any accuracy as a weapon against an aquatic predator would be like trying to punch out another primate while you have heavy weights wrapped around your wrists.

Even when I believed firmly in evolutionary theory, most of the explanations struck me as post hoc ergo propter hoc arguments. Since many evolutionists happen to not be scientists or be scientists with a lot to lose (in their minds) if religious maintains any explanatory relevance for the natural world, it doesn't surprise me that most of them cannot humbly admit that most evolutionary explanations are at best unprovable, but educated conjectures.

It could also be that the horn simply didn't matter that much for the survival of the species.

In that case, it's an awfully big, clumsy piece of useless decoration for the species to lug around through long years of natural selection. One would think it would disappear as not worth the resources. But probably you would agree with that, Mike.

Part of the issue as I see it is that there are those who really do seek to test the theory and try to form it to data as it is found, and those who see data as merely something to be explained, or explained away as the case may be, by the theory.

Lydia, your latest comment resembles Fodor's reply to his critics in the exchange I linked to. Some of his biologist and/or philosopher critics finally conceded that he was right about the explanation, but then said in effect, "OK, so that just says that people shouldn't explain it that way." Fodor replied that explanations of that type seem ubiquitous.

Fodor was right about that. I still remember a biology textbook with a drawing of short-necked proto-giraffes trying to reach the yummy leaves. Long necks were supposedly "selected for" by evolution. But Fodor showed that "selected for" explanations are wrong - not just suspect, not just often wrong, but categorically wrong. We still might know, using external knowledge and reasoning, that giraffes evolved long necks because they enable them to reach the leaves; but evolution cannot (so to speak) "know" that. So long necks were not "selected for."

But as you say, "selected for" has been a staple of writing on evolution. I still think it's a non-essential element of the theory, if it could even be called an element of the theory itself at all.

Auster has been on the rampage against evolutionary psychology, lately ...

Lawrence Auster is frequently petty, prickly and egotistical; an inventor and holder of grudges; quick to give insult where none is needed; quick to take insult where none is given; unforgiving of the false insult he has taken; uncomprehending that others remember his pointless insults.

Is there some reason for you to behave in similar fashion?

It's at the next level down that "evolutionists" start saying something interesting & different:

What rational being cares in the least how "interesting" are the things "Darwinists" assert? What they assert is not merely illogical and irrational, but anti-logical and anti-rational.

It could also be that the horn simply didn't matter that much for the survival of the species.

In that case, it's an awfully big, clumsy piece of useless decoration for the species to lug around through long years of natural selection. One would think it would disappear as not worth the resources. But probably you would agree with that, Mike.

DarwinDefenders believe very much in "intelligent design" ... it's just that they themselves are the retroactive intelligent designer. By this, I am talking about their proficiency, when they invent their Just-So Stories, of turning “evolution” (whatever they mean by that term at any given moment) off and on as their need-of-the-moment dictates. They will, and do, simultaneously assert:
1) that an increase in ‘differential reproductive success’ so slight that it can be detected only over the span of multiples of generations;
2) that a decrease in ‘differential reproductive success’ so drastic that it can seen in a single generation;
explain both the appearance of novel traits and the fixation of them in populations previously free of them.

All of 'modern evolutionary theory', including "evolutionary psychology", is so much Just-So story-telling, invented to shield from rational criticism the Central Hypothesis: "ItJustHappened!"

At least evolution can explain the human appendix in terms of a changing diet, theism not so much.

Evolution has had more than enough time to weed out the women who kill their own children (a fitness fail by definition). Yet they are all over the place.

Rabbits can reabsorb their own embryos during times of malnutrition or illness, kangaroos and many other mammals have the ability of embryonic diapause, placing development on hold until a better environment is found.

Evolution has had more than enough time to weed out homosexual genes. Homosexuality is, by definition, a fitness fail. Yet homosexuality is on the increase.

I doubt that homosexuality is on the increase, it is merely reported more often. There is also a moderate probability that bisexuality is slightly advantageous, at least in some circumstances.

Evolution has had more than enough time to weed out a huge variety of self-destructive and non-reproductive behaviors, yet these behaviors are flourishing. By evidence of fitness, Evolution is clearly false.

You really need to read Fodor's article.

I can only conclude that, in the face of all the contrary evidence, and the persistence of their fantastical beliefs, Darwinists are fanatically insane and idiotic.

On the other hand, a mystical garden with magic trees is much more sensible.

Evolution has had more than enough time to weed out homosexual genes. Homosexuality is, by definition, a fitness fail. Yet homosexuality is on the increase

There are no gay genes that code in homosexuality. No serious researcher believes this. To what everything points is an important environmental factor (conditions in the uterus? womb?). Gregory Cochran speculates that is might be a virus:

Lydia, I think a theory should be judged on its merits, not on the bad explanations of some of its defenders. I think Jerry Fodor has demolished the whole "selection-for" category of explanations, including, I think but am not sure, Steve Burton's explanation above. See Fodor's article in the LRB a few years back, and the subsequent exchange. But mostly that says that evolutionists should be a lot more careful about how they talk about evolution.

Unfortunately for them, that's not an option. The functionality or "forness" of biological reality is precisely what biology studies, and is the thing that Darwinian theory was meant to explain. They can't consistently jettison teleological language because there'd be no way to describe biology and nothing for natural selection to explain. On the other hand, you are correct that Jerry Fodor is correct that "selection-for" arguments like the ones Steve used are inconsistent with Darwinian theory. The implication is that Darwinian explanation is actually incoherent. It both necessarily relies on "forness" and is incompatible with it.

Because, up to a point, intelligence, determination, creativity, and the desire for wealth, fame & power were qualitites that tended to result, in the circumstances of human evolution, in greater inclusive fitness - I.e., genes that contributed to intelligence, determination, creativity, and the desire for wealth, fame & power tended to spread, while genes that detracted from same tended to die out.

It's a great puzzle to me why sharp gals & guys like Carol & Larry seem to find this rather obvious point so difficult to grasp.

That's trivial. It goes without saying that thoroughgoing Darwinists think that our intelligence, determination, etc etc, came about through Darwinian selection. But evolutionary psychology is supposedly a type of psychology as its name implies, and as such it is meant to "shed light" on how our minds *work*, not just how they got here. The entire field consists of attempts to deconstruct our beliefs, behaviors, motives, and mental capacities by "explaining" how they're "really" determined and driven by the imperative to survive and reproduce, rather than the reasons that we think we have for them (this, of course, never applies to the evo-psychists' *own* beliefs and reasoning, which are determined purely by objective reason and the search for truth). All his faults aside, Larry is right about the primary content of evo psych.

95% of problems with evolution come from the confusion of the myth of evolution with the science. The Big Story of how we all came to be is outside the realm of scientific experimentation, but is usually carelessly lumped in with the much more modest and rather unexciting science of adaptation and heredity in fruit flies and plant species.

Regarding the narwhal story, I remember noticing while reading a National Geographic article that 'has evolved to be' seems to be the newest variation of 'is'.

If you think that theism doesn't propose an explanation that is amenable to evidence, good for you. You will need to assert that claim with every other theist on this blog.

As Cornelius Hunter says, "Evolution is the clever theory that everything just happened for no reason."

Evolution is by definition not a theory of everything. Dawkins and etc. do make a case for a "cosmic accident" view that is tied to evolution, but evolution is not about cosmic origins or even technically about the origins of life. It is only supposed to be a theory to explain biodiversity.

What would it take to falsify Darwinian explanations of behavior? Personally I have no dog in this fight, my brand of theism is unaffected either way. Personally I have no problem accepting that some version of evolution took place, and evolutionary theory in no way threatens my beliefs. But as I see it the defenders of Darwinian behaviorial explanations - of what Darwinism has come to be - are guilty of the vices they're always accusing their opponents of engaging in: They aren't even wrong.

This is a grave vice indeed when Darwinism is often invoked as an example of the "science" side in some "conflict between science and religion."

He just said that it's a moderate possibility that it's sometimes a possibility that bisexuality is slightly advantageous. What isn't perfectly clear and straightforward about THAT?

I mean, he totally ruled out that it's major possibility that it's often a possibility that bisexuality is slightly disadvantageous, or that it's a slight possibility that it's rarely a possibility that it's greatly advantageous, and lots of other possibilities that you're surely too dense to understand. Get with it, obscurantist troglodyte!

Auster's problem is that he continually lumps several distinct claims together under the amorphous heading of "Darwinism". He typically uses that term to signify the conjunction of genetic determinism, psychological epiphenomenalism, and materialism. All of these are distinct claims which can be logically disentangled from the theory of evolution by natural selection. For this reason, a lot of criticisms of "Darwinism" simply misfire.

Nevertheless, when Auster goes after evolutionary psychology, he often draws blood. But I agree that most of his anti "Darwinian" polemics suffer from a serious lack of precision. And I say this as someone who does not view Auster as a crank; for all of his flaws, I think he is extremely insightful and generally worth reading.

While such a question isn't quite chopped-liver, failure-to-falsify can never equal establishment-of-truth. And, due to its nature and methods, failure-to-falsify is the strongest statement that real science (*) can ever make.

(*) 'Modern evolutionary theory' is not real scientific practice, but is, rather, antithetical to it. Plus, to echo the quip about the Holy Roman Empire, 'modern evolutionary theory' is not particularly modern, nor is it either evolutionary or even a scientific theory.

All of these are distinct claims which can be logically disentangled from the theory of evolution by natural selection. For this reason, a lot of criticisms of "Darwinism" simply misfire.

OTOH, Untenured, I was recently having an interesting conversation with a non-theist philosopher friend in the course of which we agreed that theistic evolutionists are seriously in denial about the vaulting ambitions of Darwinian evolutionary theory as actually held by the majority of academics and even scientists.

After all, it wouldn't sound really intereting to call "Darwin's theory of the origin of species and the descent of man" something else like "the theory of how some traits of some already established populations who got here we-don't-know-how got accentuated and fixed in place" or (as I'm afraid some wishful thinking theistic evolutionists want to believe it could be) "a scientific theory of how things trundled along for a few eons, not necessarily wholly by naturally law, God could have been 'guiding the process', but *mostly* by secondary causes, developing many different species, after which God could have worked a *helluva* big miracle and made the *enormous* changes required to make a previously non-human predecessor into man in His own image. And that would be totally compatible with the core essence of the theory of evolution."

Theism is a belief. Not a scientific hypothesis. Cut it down with category mistakes.

Allemann, actually, being a theist doesn't necessarily involve "belief". Some theists, particularly those who hold that there is a God because they understand one of the proofs for the existence of God, accept the proposition not as a belief but as knowledge.

Also, theists can make hypotheses about other things than the existence of God. Some of them make hypotheses about theistic evolution, for example, as Lydia mentioned. To make such hypotheses does not mean they think the matter is proven, though.

If you think that theism doesn't propose an explanation that is amenable to evidence, good for you. You will need to assert that claim with every other theist on this blog.

Step2, that makes no sense. Many theists make no strong claims about how biodiversity happened, and some of them are willing to grant some darwinian models full play. Since their theism is not "about" biodiversity, the fact that it doesn't explain biodiversity is irrelevant. I am a mathematician, and my mathematical ideas don't say word one about how biodiversity came to be. Does that mean my mathematics "doesn't propose an explanation that is amenable to evidence" about evolution is saying something of any significance about said math? Of course not.

I was recently having an interesting conversation with a non-theist philosopher friend in the course of which we agreed that theistic evolutionists are seriously in denial about the vaulting ambitions of Darwinian evolutionary theory as actually held by the majority of academics and even scientists.

I'm not in denial. The majority of them are anti-Christian. That doesn't make theistic evolution wrong.

or (as I'm afraid some wishful thinking theistic evolutionists want to believe it could be) "a scientific theory of how things trundled along for a few eons, not necessarily wholly by naturally law, God could have been 'guiding the process', but *mostly* by secondary causes, developing many different species, after which God could have worked a *helluva* big miracle and made the *enormous* changes required to make a previously non-human predecessor into man in His own image. And that would be totally compatible with the core essence of the theory of evolution."

Lydia,

I’ve not read any theistic evolutionists except for Francis Collins so I don’t know what most of them think. I’ve imagined the process by the following (admittedly imperfect) analogy:
We have written computer codes here at work that use monte-carlo/stochastic (specifically, random number generator) input that arrive at an answer that could have been arrived at deterministically/closed-form. I imagine the creation model as similar. God knew the outcome will be man made in His image so our creation is an act of God’s positive will even if it’s done through a stochastic process. We know God can and does intervene in the model (e.g. the incarnation) but of course we don’t know how often (could be all the time, could be only when a miracle is performed – we don’t know. Similarly, we can distinguish conceptually between God’s positive will and God’s permissible will without claiming to be able to discern with certainty on a case-by-case basis which event falls into one category or the other).

Isn’t this an even more magnificent view of the God? It emphasizes that God is entirely outside of and sovereign over His creation. Beyond the physical universe and time itself (which we knew anyway).

One would think it would disappear as not worth the resources. But probably you would agree with that, Mike.

I wouldn't. We don't know how the trait actually came into existence and therefore are ill-equipped to start making strong hypotheses about how they'll cease to exist beyond the inability of those with the trait to reproduce. Clearly, narwhales have not found this seemingly borderline useless trait that is extremely cumbersome relative to its utility to be a problem for reproduction.

Fodor was right about that. I still remember a biology textbook with a drawing of short-necked proto-giraffes trying to reach the yummy leaves. Long necks were supposedly "selected for" by evolution. But Fodor showed that "selected for" explanations are wrong - not just suspect, not just often wrong, but categorically wrong. We still might know, using external knowledge and reasoning, that giraffes evolved long necks because they enable them to reach the leaves; but evolution cannot (so to speak) "know" that. So long necks were not "selected for."

It would be interesting to see their hypothesis on how the intermediate species survived. Anything firmly between the original and final forms of a giraffe would be an incredibly awkward animal. Its neck, shoulder and leg structures making large-scale grazing on grass cumbersome, but foraging reliably from trees impossible. Is there enough vegetation available at the intermediate height to support such a structure?

This view to me seems more amazing than imagining that God assembled the product a bunch of different times like a factory worker who’s making cars one year and pickups the next and vans the next.

Personally, I find the idea that God "subclasses" an existing species more elegant. When you conceptually mix class and prototype inheritance, the options become rather interesting such as being able to take an existing class, instantiate it and mutate its definition on the fly for a specific case or experiment.

No, Bruce, I don't find the idea of a God who tiptoes around in his creation leaving no traces particularly "magnificent." Spinozistic, but not magnificent. Of course, if he left no more trace on the origin of species than he leaves on the origin of the daily weather in my home town, that would be the state of the evidence. As long as one was open to a change in the state of the evidence later on, it would be no problem to say so. What's ridiculous is starting out with the idea that this "God who is outside creation and doesn't leave detectible traces" theology is the way it _must be_ and rejecting evidence to the contrary in the sciences. Most of the time, theistic evolutionists are the attack dogs for the materialists (and the materialists are happy to let them be so and find them very useful) when it comes to not welcoming nor even allowing intelligent discussion of actual evidence of design in nature. Boycotting conferences at Christian colleges, reviewing books without reading them, making the theology do scientific work, etc., etc.

Lydia, I don't think it's "the way it must be" but I don't know if most theistic evolutionists because I haven't read many of them.

For all I know, the most fundamentalist Young Earther is correct. I think an ancient earth and evolution (including macroevolution) are more likely true than not true but it's not something I know to be true.

If you haven't already, Bruce, you shd. do some browsing at the Uncommon Descent blog, read Darwin's Black Box, check out Mike Behe's responses to his critics on his web page, check out the origin-of-life problem (which TE scientist Ken Miller once more or less admitted to me in person he doesn't have an answer to), etc. Lots of interesting material. One thing that always strikes me is that many TE's want some general notion of God's "guiding" the process, and if you read people in the ID "big tent" that's exactly what you'll find--decidedly non-YEC theories that involve minute, but crucial and detectable, design activity. Vincent Torley is a good example in this respect. Now, if this isn't what's meant by God's guiding the process I don't know what is, but what emerges in uncompromising TE rejection of ID is that apparently it's precisely the detectability that the TEs don't want. God is allowed to guide the process only invisibly, so that the very notion of guiding becomes unclear in meaning--apparently it must be merely another word for general providence.

Matt, that would be a "problem" with a lot of things. If God wrote, "I am Yahweh; worship me and no other" in the stars, we also wouldn't have a control universe to compare it to. For that matter, you don't have a control universe in which I don't exist to use for comparison purposes in deciding whether I wrote this blog comment and whether the words would have appeared anyway.

Comparing the rational detection of agent action to the rational study of constant physical processes and laws is a mistake. Yet somehow we manage all day and every day to detect agent action quite rationally.

To say that something cannot be experimented on doesn't imply it can never be known, true.

However, with most forms of 'agent action', you do have a comparison to use. I can compare what a place developed by humans looks like to a place untouched by them, and then develop some general idea of what to look for to decide whether humans ever touched some future place. On the other hand, if God designed the universe then he designed all of it. If he did not then he designed none of it. For any given rock, what does a designed rock look like compared to an undesigned one? This is an issue specific to God, because he is creator of all, whereas all the rest of us are creators of not so much.

Wait a minute, why can't evolutionary theory jettison teleological language? I thought it was just a short-hand that could be cashed in for a longer, non-teleological explanation when desired.

For instance, if I still remember Fodor's argument correctly, it's OK to say that evolution selected giraffes that were long-necked. (What's not OK is to say that evolution selected for the long-necked trait in giraffes.) The "selected" metaphor in the first sentence can be cashed in as, "Giraffes with long necks passed on that heritable trait to their descendants, and they had more descendants than short-necked giraffes, therefore giraffes have long necks." As opposed to a Lamarckian explanation that the giraffes gradually stretched their necks, etc. So where's the teleological language that's stuck in that Darwinian explanation? I don't see it.

Well, Matt, I know this is what really annoys some people, because it clashes with their theology somehow (though I don't think it should), but I think the Christian idea has always been that we can at least sometimes tell a difference between those things that happen by way of the secondary causes God has set up in the universe and those things that happen by more specific Divine action. One can call this more specific Divine action "intervention," and I think that's great. I have no hang-ups about intervention, but unfortunately some people do. Sometimes it's pointed out (I suppose, truly enough), that for any putative Divine intervention God _could_ have "front-loaded" the whole thing.

I suppose this is even true of Jesus' miracles! I mean, with God being omnipotent and Jesus being God incarnate, the changing of the water into wine could have been "front-loaded" from the big bang on so that it would _just happen_ that the molecules in the universe would reorganize from water into wine at the very moment that Jesus told the servants to pour out the wine! Now, if this is meaningful as distinct from an actual intervention/miracle at the time (and I'm not absolutely convinced that the distinction is meaningful), the fact remains that of course it would have _appeared_ to be an intervention at the time. It would be a little difficult in that case to see why God would have front-loaded the miracle at Cana rather than simply performing a miracle at Cana.

Now, when I speak of design in, say, non-man-designed biological structures as detectable, what I mean is that it appears that some special act of a very powerful intelligent being, beyond the actions of secondary causes such as random matter movement and physical law, appears to be the best explanation of some structure or entity in the universe. I don't want to deny the logical possibility of hyper-front-loading by God and absolutely insist on intervention, but as the event in which the entity or structure came into existence would (like the wine at Cana) appear to have come into existence through powerful agent intervention even if it were hyper-front-loaded, this is sort of an epistemically moot point. To some people it's an important metaphysical point, but that appears to me to be simply because they think it very important that God not intervene.

Rocks do not appear to have been specially designed in the sense of requiring special agent action beyond the actions of physical causes. Ordinary rocks, that is. Mt. Rushmore is of course a different case, isn't it? Though there the agent action is human agent action. But for ordinary rocks, the particular shapes and arrangement of matter in them can be well explained by secondary causes. That there should be medium-sized matter *at all* may be a different, er, matter, and there we get into things like, say, the kalam cosmological argument.

Now, there are all kinds of other interesting things like the basic values of the constants in the universe which give rise to various fine-tuning design arguments. But those physical laws and facts are generally taken as a background when we're talking about a particular rock, and the specifics of that rock are what we are talking about. The specifics of this rock--its being this size and shape or having this mineral composition--do not appear to have been designed in the sense of requiring special agent action.

That kind of explanation that I've just given really annoys the dickens out of some people, but it seems to me to be just common sense.

In short, if it appears that some super-powerful agent designed, e.g., the first reproducing cells, the DNA code, or the blood-clotting cascade, this is a type and a sense of "design" that takes place against the background of the existence of the universe with its laws and the motion of matter in accordance with those laws. It is a sense and type of design that goes beyond God's setting up those fundamental aspects of the universe and appears to require more specific and detailed choice, direction, and organization of matter by agency.

I mean, he totally ruled out that it's major possibility that it's often a possibility that bisexuality is slightly disadvantageous, or that it's a slight possibility that it's rarely a possibility that it's greatly advantageous, and lots of other possibilities that you're surely too dense to understand. Get with it, obscurantist troglodyte!

...after which God could have worked a *helluva* big miracle and made the *enormous* changes required to make a previously non-human predecessor into man in His own image.

Isn't every miracle a *helluva* big miracle? I thought they each involved suspension of the laws of nature. Here are the two problematic questions to consider when you try to make miracles less supernatural: If miracles just involve a "lucky occurrence", how is that different from general providence? If miracles just involve a designer able to create what a well-supplied genetic scientist could build, how is that a super-powerful agent?

Since their theism is not "about" biodiversity, the fact that it doesn't explain biodiversity is irrelevant.

If those theists were commonplace on this blog, I would drastically qualify my statement. Since they aren't, I stand by it. Furthermore, while math is an important tool for modeling objective reality, it provides no explanations about that reality. Theism and science on the other hand both make explanations about how the objective world came to be and how it works. When those claims conflict, which they inevitably will, there is only one truth of the matter.

Lydia, I have read Darwin's Black Box, and looked at other Behe-type arguments for ID, and so far at least I have found them wanting. Not, that is to say, simply wrong, but insufficiently thorough and rigorous, I think. I am perfectly willing to accept the possibility that God did leave his footprints all over the natural world in things like irreducibly complex DNA results, and I am perfectly fine with our eventually proving it. I just haven't seen arguments for it that seem as airtight as, say, the evidence for the germ source of disease, or the atomic theory of chemical composition, to pick two pretty well established scientific explanations of (aspects of) the world.

It is certainly possible to show with convincing evidence things that cannot be proven directly: we get at them indirectly. However, we must be cautious about drawing conclusions from evidence of this nature towards claims about what DID happen back in time: the evidence can show us one possible mechanism by which a thing can come to pass, and much more complete evidence may even show that many other proposed mechanisms cannot account for the facts. But it is virtually impossible for the evidence to prove conclusively that the one specific mechanism theorized is actually the one responsible in the past. This is especially true in the case of non-deterministic intermediate causes like animal actions based on animal natures and instincts, and human actions. I suspect that it would only be possible to claim that a God-oriented explanation _is_ the mechanism responsible only when proposed in tandem with a non-scientific theory about "how God is understood to operate in the world." While the proposed non-scientific theory may be extremely sensible and highly satisfying to faith, it seems unlikely to provide a premise of rigorously scientific conclusions.

Michael Levin, in his paper _Homosexuality, Abnormality, and Civil Rights_, endorses the view that an instrument is _for_ those of its functions which explain its existence. For example, teeth are for biting and chewing and not for stringing around one's neck or holding nails while hammering and noses are for smelling and breathing and not for holding up glasses. (Or something to that effect -- I'm going by memory.) He argues on that basis that homosexuality is abnormal. Does Fodor's point undermine this argument, assuming one otherwise accepts standard evolutionary theory (as Levin seems to)?

Why is it that you theistic evolutionists are always prattling on about God when it has nothing to do with God? ID has to do with things that are quite evidently designed by an intelligence. There’s no reference to God, only to the thing and what the thing immediately implies. For example, is the cell evidently designed by an intelligence or not? If you say yes, then congratulations, you’re an IDer. If you say, “no, there’s a better explanation for it. . .” then great, we’re all ears. Let’s hear it. But please, spare us your references to “God-oriented explanations.” You can save that kind of doughy prose for your theistic-evolutionist prayer meetings.

I just haven't seen arguments for it that seem as airtight as, say, the evidence for the germ source of disease, or the atomic theory of chemical composition, to pick two pretty well established scientific explanations of (aspects of) the world.

Tony, how about arguments that Cyrus the Mede dammed the Euphrates in order to conquer Babylon? We're talking about agents and history, here. Your examples seem to me inapt. They are about things that *happen all the time around us*. Germs cause disease constantly, today, in your house. The things around you are presently made up of atoms and can be examined to be such.

In origins science, we're talking about origins--an historical event a long time ago. The evidence that these things were designed by an intelligent agent is, as far as I'm concerned, extremely strong, and far, far stronger than the evidence that they came about in any non-designed fashion by purely secondary causes. That idea just at this point seems to me to be a non-starter. If you're going to have a theory of origins at all, you're going to have to accept the limitations of the rational investigation of singular events. The word "science" can be rather confusing here precisely because most science is not origins science.

I suspect that it would only be possible to claim that a God-oriented explanation _is_ the mechanism responsible only when proposed in tandem with a non-scientific theory about "how God is understood to operate in the world."

And it would be possible to claim that a Lydia-oriented explanation *is* the mechanism responsible for this comment only when proposed in tandem with a non-scientific theory about "how Lydia is understood to operate in the world." And, alas, while the proposed non-scientific theory [of Lydian action] may be extremely sensible and highly satisfying to faith, it seems unlikely to provide a premise of "rigorously scientific conclusions." Hmmm. I guess you can only believe in my existence and actions by faith. :-)

Tony, how about arguments that Cyrus the Mede dammed the Euphrates in order to conquer Babylon? We're talking about agents and history, here.

No, no, that's history. I.E., what people wrote down and has been preserved intentionally or by accident as records. Indirectly, what people made that, in addition to its standard use _also_ records information as information. When we have historical records, we are using a whole different level of evidential reasoning here. I am fine with that. I think that the evidential basis for the Resurrection is a pretty darn solid basis, for example.

When you have to go by pre-history evidence, though, the evidence gets more ambiguous. The data certainly points in directions of causes, but proving as a matter of fact that X cause _can_ cause the effect we know about today is far easier to do than proving that X specific cause is, in fact, the actual cause of (a canyon, the distance between the Earth and Moon, the closer and denser rings on trees in California 2000 years BC, etc).

and far, far stronger than the evidence that they came about in any non-designed fashion by purely secondary causes.

Yes, it could be far stronger than other origins hypotheses and still be quite a ways from a solid, rigorously established explanation. Also, there are multiple "origins" problems, not one: the origin of the universe as a whole, the origin of living things, the origin of animals, and the origin of man. Each one of these has its own philosophical set of constraints.

Let me give you an example of one of Behe's areas of weakness. He presents a chain of something like 37 steps needed in the clotting of blood, with a very specific series of proteins that only work in that sequence. Good, complex, and very difficult to explain OTHER than by design, because no part of the chain works if not all 37 steps are there. But nature doesn't produce all 37 steps at once, so no smaller chain would be "selected" for survivability. (Do I catch the heart of the argument here?)

The problem (not a defeater, just a problem that has not yet been dealt with by Behe) is that we do not yet have good science on the change processes that produce new pieces and groupings of protein machines out of old ones. Therefore, we cannot yet say with any scientific confidence that there IS NO way nature can produce that 37-step chain other than all at once, and that therefore there is no way nature can produce any significant portion of that chain and have its survival be explained.

For example: a 9-piece portion of the 37 is found in another animal embedded in another chain, where it has a perfectly appropriate function. We also know that bacteria and viruses sometimes "borrow" and then "carry" DNA sections from one host to another. It is easily imaginable that the 9-step chain from one animal got carried from that animal to human-predecessors, thereby introducing a huge step forward in getting to that 37-step protein machine.

Is this really what happened? I have no confidence that this fully explains it. My point is not that this thinly developed possibility simply destroys Behe's thesis, it doesn't. What it does is it calls for Behe and other scientists to study how complex chains develop, and see whether the processes admit of huge leaps forward of 10 or 15 steps combined with other 10-15 step machines, by way of borrowed sequences or other mechanisms not yet proposed. Right now, we simply don't know enough about this subject to be confident that it is possible or that it isn't, so far as I know.

What Behe has so far is a hypothesis working its way toward being a viable scientific theory. It has a ways to go before it is there. It might take a good 50 years to really answer to the name. Or it might be disproven 50 years from now by showing a perfectly sound and uncontroversial mechanism for a 37-step chain being produced in nature without direct design. Behe cannot call his conclusion science by simply claiming that there is no possible mechanism, he has to actually do the hard work of science to explore all the mechanisms nature does use, explore their limits, and rigorously show how those limits preclude any alternative than design. He has made a start on the road, but he is not home free just yet.

Tony, what you seem to be alluding to as a "problem" is what I once heard described as "the theory that everything was once something else," otherwise known as the co-option theory. As you probably know, co-option theories have been discussed by Behe and others more knowledgeable than I. For my part, I will simply say that the fact that some chunk of these proteins form a completely different working machine within a completely different complex multi-organed animal is hardly helpful in providing a remotely plausible natural mechanism whereby all of these proteins would have all come together at the same time by chance (and I'm not afraid to use the word "chance") to form a new working machine in a completely different complex creature which somehow survived without that machine before they all came along.

To tell you the truth, the more I learn just as a layman about the structure of biological entities the more it seems to me that if anything Behe is far too cautious. If these are not intelligently designed machines with the signature of deliberate, teleological, intelligent building from the top down, with function, comprehended in a Mind, carefully written into them at every stage, then nothing is. Moreover, we have machines within machines, machines at a higher level that Behe preferred not to talk about--for example, organ systems themselves. The female reproductive system alone with its multiple organs and precise chemical cascades is obviously a teleologically, intelligently designed biological entity, comprising a set of intelligently designed sub-entities.

By the way, the whole "no possible natural mechanism" way of talking seems to me unfortunate, and to the extent that Mike Behe uses it, something that should be refined out. To the extent that he uses it, it is a reflection of the unfortunate dominance of Bill Dembski's explanatory filter in the ID community. Tony, I forget if I've ever mentioned this to you, but we (Esteemed Husband and I) had a long-running debate with Dembski about whether his neo-Fisherian eliminative approach was the correct way to understand and model design inferences. We held that it was not.

In fairness, though, to Dembski, I should say this: Many, many working scientists appear to be functional falsificationists. Had Darwinian theory been a theory in physics, for example, and been less theologically and sociologically fraught, it would have been "rejected" long ago and a frantic search would have been on for a theory with fewer anomalies, which theory, if discovered, would not have been solemnly dubbed "Darwinism" so as to keep up the pretense that nothing has changed in Austria, as it were. When Dembski insists that the non-design theory should be "rejected," he's probably saying something perfectly respectable in the pragmatic terms of the way that scientists generally do work. The sudden demand that the design theorists come up with a detailed alternative before neo-Darwinism is rejected is a double standard in terms of real science. For that matter, the claim that to reject the neo-Darwinian theory as unable to account for the blood-clotting cascade requires that we "prove that there is no possible mechanism" is far too strong a requirement--again, if we were talking about something other than biological origins theory where scientists (horsewhipped by fear for their jobs, if nothing else, and with the bullying of the claims of "mainstream consensus" even while the field is quietly in turmoil) cling to the name "Darwinism" as limpets to a rock or shipwrecked mariners to a life raft.

JT, I don't think Fodor's article has anything to say one way or the other about Levin's teleological claim. You should read it, though, because I might not be remembering it accurately. Fodor would dispute that natural selection selected for teeth when it selected organisms that had teeth. He would not dispute that we know (from knowledge that can't be part of the theory of natural selection) that teeth evolved because they function to bite and chew. But all that seems independent of the claim that biting and chewing are a telos of teeth. Function is not telos.

A, I took your advice and re-read both Levin and Fodor. Levin's argument is framed entirely in terms of "functions": "In fact, 'normal' can be defined without reference to God if 'function' can be, since structures and behavioral drives are ordinarily said to be working normally when they are performing or can perform their functions. ... [A]ccording to Larry Wright, a thing's 'functions' are those of its effects that explain its existence. When something is explained by what it does instead of (as is usual) what caused it, what it does is its function." So it seems that determining a trait's function on his (or rather, Wright's) definition requires identifying the reason for the trait's existence -- what it was selected for. Levin even states that "[l]eading to reproduction got the sex drive selected in, so, by Wright's analysis, reproduction is its functin. More spcifically, genes are fit insofar as they produce copies of themselves, and gees which programmed heterosexual intercourse were more likely to replicate than their competitors."

I think your reading of Fodor's article is right, though he doesn't use the term "selected" with respect to organisms (as opposed to traits). He doesn't have any objection to saying that white polar bears had more offspring than their brown relatives. What you can't say is that that "the white bears were selected ‘because of’ their improved camouflage." So I think he'd deny that camouflage exists "because" it allows bears to hunt more effectively, or that teeth exist "because" they can bite or chew, or that penises exist "because" they can engage in vaginal intercourse, despite the fact that organisms without those traits would be pretty lousy at those activities (as one could determine experimentally by putting white bears in an orange environment or pulling teeth).

For instance, if I still remember Fodor's argument correctly, it's OK to say that evolution selected giraffes that were long-necked.

Well, first of all, using "selected that" is just as bad as using "selected for". "Select" is a synonym for "choose", and is a teleological term. The "for" is implied when you use it. If I say, "I select only breakfast cereals that are high in fiber", for instance, the implication is that I'm selecting for high fiber. It's the concept of for that's the problem, not the word.

The "selected" metaphor in the first sentence can be cashed in as...

If it's really just a metaphor that can be easily cashed out anyways, then it doesn't really matter if you say "for" or "that". From what I've read of Fodor, his problem isn't that the metaphor is wrong, but that it can't actually be cashed out, and so shouldn't be used.

So where's the teleological language that's stuck in that Darwinian explanation? I don't see it.

The problem is that if you really do get rid of the teleological language, it ceases to be a general-purpose explanation of biology, because there's then no way to account for biological function. To illustrate, look at what you said next:

He would not dispute that we know (from knowledge that can't be part of the theory of natural selection) that teeth evolved because they function to bite and chew.

Yes, teeth function to bite and chew. Eyes function to let you see. Wings function to let birds fly. Brains function to let people think. Flagellums function to let bacteria swim, etc etc. The raw materials that make up living organisms are fairly common throughout the universe - carbon, water, calcium, sodium, etc. But what makes them so interesting, the main thing about them that demands an explanation, is that they appear to have function. That's what teeth, eyes, wings, brains, flagellums, and all other biological structures have in common, even though they are so physically different from each other.

But to say that, for instance, eyes function to see, is just another way of saying that eyes are for seeing. And if you want to explain how eyes came to be for seeing, and how biological things come to be for doing things in general, then you need an explanation that includes them being selected for those things.

That's what Darwin was trying to accomplish. That's why he used the term "selection" in his theory, and why he made analogies to human breeders (who literally select for traits). He was straining to come up with an explanation that was both mechanistic (non-teleological) yet teleological at the same time. That's contradictory, and the issue has been with the theory ever since. If we acknowledge that biological function (aka forness) is real, and we want to use natural selection to explain it, then we can never cash out the teleological language. If we want to say that natural selection is a materialistic, non-teleological theory on the other hand, then we *must* be able to cash out the teleological language, but then the theory loses its explanatory force.

Of course, you could outright deny that biological function even exists (though this also implies that natural selection can't explain it, of course, since it's not there to be explained), but that commits you to a radical anti-realism that would destroy all of science (and all rational inquiry, for that matter) if consistently applied (that's a big topic for another day).

Here's another way of getting at what I think the Deuce is saying: Consider the possibility that human beings were to start walking on their hands much of the time. Now, imagine that, as a result of some strange, chance, environmental situation (which I will leave to others with more imagination to dream up) this works out really well, and the people who insist on continuing to walk only or mostly on their feet die out while those who have stronger and stronger hands and various other physical capabilities allowing them to walk mostly on their hands survive. In that case, on a Darwinian account, it would be true that "the function of hands is to walk on." All non-teleological accounts of function are in this exact sense necessarily post hoc. On a purely non-teleological "cashing out," the statement "Feet are for walking" is true now, in our real world, in *exactly the same sense* that "hands are for walking" would be true in the imaginary scenario I just set up. All function turns out to exist only post hoc, after the bare fact that something can work in such-and-such a way or sometimes works in that way or has started to work that way has gotten fixed in place in a stable population. During the interim, when that way of working is just cropping up here and there, or when it hasn't yet had enough time for some sort of imaginary observer to say that it's been evolutionarily successful, or whatever, it is entirely undetermined (false?) that "feet are for walking" or "teeth are for chewing."

I don't think that's what I'm saying. I'm simply pointing out that when it comes to teleology, Darwinian materialists are in the position of "can't live with it, can't live without it," (that is, their attempt at an explanation is premised on teleology being both real and not real at the same time) which renders the explanation incoherent.

On a purely non-teleological "cashing out," the statement "Feet are for walking" is true now

No, that's not a non-teleological "cashing out", because it still includes the teleological concept of "for". A non-teleological phrase would be something like "feet walk".

All function turns out to exist only post hoc

No, on a non-teleological account, function doesn't exist at all. Or, at best, it exists purely in our minds as an illusion that we project onto the natural world rather than as a real thing in need of explanation (although this then requires a non-teleological account of the teleology in our minds, which requires a reductionist account of intentionality among other things, which implies eliminativism of the mind, which in addition to being incoherent implies that function doesn't exist at all after all).

I think that we probably agree, Deuce, on substance even though we're using different terminology. For example, this

No, on a non-teleological account, function doesn't exist at all.

is to my mind rather like the statement by an ordinary person that, on Berkeley's account, a tree doesn't exist at all. Now, Berkeley disputed that statement passionately. He insisted that on his account the tree _does_ exist and that it exists in the only sense that it _can_ exist--as a perceived idea in the mind of God.

My sympathies lie with the person who says that, on Berkeley's account, the tree doesn't exist, because the person's point is that Berkeley's radical redefinition of material objects (including trees) is not what we all _mean_ by "trees" and "rocks."

Similarly, I have plenty of sympathy with the person who says that on a non-teleological account function doesn't exist, because what the non-teleologist means by "function" isn't what we all previously meant by "function."

However, for the sake of the argument (and also for the sake of having a "fact to be explained" to discuss with the non-teleologist), we can allow him his redefinition of "the function of feet is to walk." This isn't quite solely "feet walk." It also includes something about the history of feet, a bit like this: "Feet walk, and the fact that feet walk (and hearts pump, and eyes see) is useful to the organisms that have feet, and this usefulness is one of the important causal factors in the existence of feet today."

Which, of course, is what I mean by calling this a post hoc account of function. Which is exceedingly unsatisfying.

Deuce, I still don't see what's wrong with the metaphor that certain kinds of organisms were selected. There's obviously no teleology in "giraffes with long necks were naturally selected," except as an obvious figure of speech. All it means is that long-necked giraffes had more fertile offspring.

Lydia's commentary on your explanation actually matches how I see all this. I do see function (in that explanatory sense of the word) as non-teleological and post hoc, exactly as she says. If it was supposed to be an ad absurdum, well, I don't see any absurdity there. It's unsatisfying, yes, but not absurd.

And I think that's consistent with the point I quoted Fodor on, too. As Fodor explained, we know that polar bears evolved to be white because of the color of their environment, even though natural selection alone cannot logically suggest that. Therefore (this is me talking now, not Fodor), we know that the function of their white fur is to blend in - "function" in the sense that Lydia described. That is in fact non-teleological, and it is an explanation, though less spiritually satisfying than that of the creationists.

Similarly, I have plenty of sympathy with the person who says that on a non-teleological account function doesn't exist, because what the non-teleologist means by "function" isn't what we all previously meant by "function."

Lydia, that's just what I was thinking as well. You beat me to it.

Because atheistic evolutionists usually don't like to pretend that they actually believe in God.

George, don't get snarky, please. Everyone here knows that I believe in God, and that it is not a "pretense" to use your word. Nobody here knows whether I am an evolutionist because I haven't said.

I repeat, why in the world do you say I am a theistic evolutionist?

The sudden demand that the design theorists come up with a detailed alternative before neo-Darwinism is rejected is a double standard in terms of real science. For that matter, the claim that to reject the neo-Darwinian theory as unable to account for the blood-clotting cascade requires that we "prove that there is no possible mechanism" is far too strong a requirement-

Lydia, I view it differently than that. Behe should be held to the same standard as applies general in good biological science (please, I said "good" because I don't assume Darwinian prognosticators' attempts automatically are, simply, good science). In order for a conclusion to be drawn out of the data, the conclusion must rest on a rigorous deductive chain of reasoning, or else it is still in the area of conjecture, hypothesis, and such.

Behe's model of conclusion is by way of exclusion: (a) this chain is irreducibly complex, and (b) there is _no way_ to arrive at irreducibly complex chains except by design. There are, then, potential problems from either of these premises: First, you have to have a rigorous definition of "irreducibly complex" in order to have a rigorous conclusion from it. I think that Behe has attempted something along this line, but I think it needs some refinement.

The second point is harder. In mathematics we often prove that a conjecture "X holds for all Y" is wrong by coming up with a single counterexample in which X fails to hold for the given Y. But the reverse type of proof, t"here are NO Y's for which X holds" is typically far more challenging. The conjecture that there was no general solution for equations in the 5th degree was around for over 100 years before it was proven: it's just a bear to prove.

In order to have a rigorous, scientific validation of the point, it seems likely that you would have to have some kind of established conceptual framework that explains in some detail how chains can come to exist, completely independently of this particular application of such a framework: what are the logical possibilities for how a chain may come to exist? What subclasses exist? What are the logical limits to this class versus that class of such "how they come to exist" mechanisms? We don't really have such a conceptual framework. At the moment, we have 2 proposed currently (with a couple more having been discarded long ago) for such mechanisms in biology, and not much of a science about them. What Behe at the moment can say, then, is that right now there is no good candidate for such a mechanism other than design. That's fine. It puts his hypothesis on the map as something worthy of further scientific research.

Similarly, I have plenty of sympathy with the person who says that on a non-teleological account function doesn't exist, because what the non-teleologist means by "function" isn't what we all previously meant by "function."

The problem is, the non-teleologist doesn't mean something different by "function" from the rest of us. He's using the same common-sense observation that feet are for walking as the rest of us. The difference is that (if he's consistent with materialism) he claims that he's just using the concept as a metaphor for a non-teleological reality.

This isn't quite solely "feet walk." It also includes something about the history of feet, a bit like this: "Feet walk, and the fact that feet walk (and hearts pump, and eyes see) is useful to the organisms that have feet, and this usefulness is one of the important causal factors in the existence of feet today."

No, that's a logically illegitimate move, and it can't work as a definition of function (though, of course, Darwinists tie themselves into knots all the time by attempting "redefinitions" of function like this, in order to avoid the anti-realist implications of denying that biological function exists). Remember, the functionality of living structures is something that we all observe around us. We seek to explain that appearance of functionality that we see. The supposed Darwinian historical causes aren't something that we observe. Rather, they're something that Darwinists infer in order to explain the functionality that we observe.

If you define "function" in terms of Darwinian causal factors, you can't then proffer up Darwinian causal factors to explain that "function", as you're then using something to explain itself. It would be analogous to me saying "The cause of all papers that were caused by me writing them is that I wrote them". Furthermore, "function" so redefined cannot be equated with the function that we seem to see around us (though, of course, that's precisely the use that such redefinitions are intended for), so the function we see around us is left unexplained.

It's very simple. We observe function in biology. We have two options: 1) Affirm that what appears to exist really exists (which implies a teleological cause), 2) Deny that it exists. (which implies anti-realism).

Aaron, when I said "less satisfying," I certainly didn't mean spiritually! I would say it's less _biologically_ satisfying and also less _conceptually_ and philosophically satisfying. I just saw an AP news headline this morning about a pig that has learned to walk on its front feet (I think I have this right). Now, think about this: From the perspective of post-hoc redefinitions of "function," we have to take seriously the possibility that it *may turn out* that the "function" of a pig's front feet is to walk on (exclusively, without the use of its hind feet). This would presumably have a corollary that it would *turn out* that it is *not* the function of the pig's other pair of feet to be walked on! Now, this is profoundly counterintuitive. The way that everybody uses function, something is either supposed to _have_ a certain function or _not_ have that function. It's supposed to be a real, determinate feature of reality concerning the creature. By redefining "function" so that it literally doesn't exist until after it's been successful, you leave yourself with these in-between stages where it neither is nor is not the function of a heart to beat or of feet to be walked on. You just have to wait and see. To make it worse, for all we can tell (not being able to see the whole of time, including the future, stretched out before us) from the Darwinian perspective it may happen that human feet are going to change so that people no longer walk on them, or hearts evolve into something else, so it may be that at some microlevel we can't see and throughout the species the heart is *ceasing to have* the function of beating, introducing ambiguity right now into the statement "The function of the heart is to pump blood." To my mind, that's manifestly _not_ an analysis of the concept of "function," at least not of my concept.

Nor can the non-teleologist drop the historical aspect and simply go with "feet walk," because that's trivializing. In that case, if I even once use my teeth for opening a bottle, the function of teeth is to open bottles, since they have once been used that way. And so on and so forth. If I flap my hair around a couple of times when I'm being bothered by a fly in the summer, then the function of human hair (like a horse's tail) is to scare flies away, even though the vast majority of humans never use their hair in this way. If a poor baby is born without legs and drags himself around with his hands, that's then automatically the function of hands. I think most non-teleologists don't want to trivialize "function" in this way.

But it seems, quite frankly, that the only way to avoid both trivialization and severe indeterminacy which is far too akin to non-realism about function is to make "function" include teleology, which automatically (in my opinion) means that _someone_ intended feet to be used for walking and hearts to pump blood. Which is of course unacceptable to the non-teleologist.

IMO (here I'm really opening a can of worms and probably alienating all my Aristotelian friends) the idea of real teleology without the involvement of an intending mind is incoherent.

In order for a conclusion to be drawn out of the data, the conclusion must rest on a rigorous deductive chain of reasoning, or else it is still in the area of conjecture, hypothesis, and such.

Tony, I'm sorry, but that's just really, really wrong philosophy of science. And there I really do know what I'm talking about. Scientific conclusions are always non-deductively obtained. Science is an empirical discipline. Science _always_ involves theory confirmation and disconfirmation. That's part of the reason that we change our minds over time in science.

Deuce, I still don't see what's wrong with the metaphor that certain kinds of organisms were selected. There's obviously no teleology in "giraffes with long necks were naturally selected," except as an obvious figure of speech. All it means is that long-necked giraffes had more fertile offspring.

Actually, it doesn't even mean that. It's possible that short-necked giraffes were more fertile (unless "fertile" means nothing more than "produced descendents living today who's necks are still short", which is probably just what it means in this context). When you get right down to it, we really can't say anything at all about the short-necked giraffes themselves (beyond the putatively short necks) without additional external evidence, but only that they don't exist anymore because something happened to them (that something could've been starvation, or lower fertility, or bad luck, or whatever). What the Darwinian can say is, "Shorter-necked giraffes died off, and their short necks likely contributed".

Anyhow, both your way of saying it and mine are just as simple as "Natural selection selected long-necked giraffes". So, if it's so simple, why all the persistent, supposedly misleading teleological language throughout biology in the first place?

Take note that in this case you aren't trying to explain function or forness. Nobody said that it's the function of the giraffe's neck to be long. It just is long (this may aid the giraffe in the function of eating, of course). That makes it far easier to give a non-teleological explanation in this particular case without running into a contradiction, even if the explanation is rather trite (Obviously any and all short-necked giraffes died off or didn't reproduce as many descendents with their traits as long-necked giraffes did, otherwise they'd still exist, by sheer logical deduction).

But trying to extend this throughout biology would be a no-go. Imagine trying to avoid not only talking about things being "selected for" in the past, but also avoiding any talk whatsoever about "function" and "forness" in the present. Imagine trying to talk about how the brain works, how DNA correction mechanisms work, how cellular structures work, how complex organs work, the human capacity for reason, intentionality etc - not only in evo-bio but throughout the medical fields, psychology, philosophy, etc - without ever invoking concepts of forness, function, purpose, information, etc. It would fall apart very, very quickly.

But here's the thing: Aristotle never taught that there can be teleology without a mind. Next time one of those Aristotelians claim that he did, ask him to cite a relevant passage. I assure you, he will not be able to. It's nothing but an argument from silence. But it doesn't even rise to the level of an argument from silence, because Aristotle explicitly taught the exact opposite. In both the Physics and the Metaphysics he explicitly says that before there can be a universe, there must be a mind. So, in fact, this opinion that Aristotle taught that there can be teleology without a mind is nothing but a gigantic, out-of-control, urban legend.

Deuce writes: "If it's really just a metaphor that can be easily cashed out anyways, then it doesn't really matter if you say 'for' or 'that'. From what I've read of Fodor, his problem isn't that the metaphor is wrong, but that it can't actually be cashed out, and so shouldn't be used."

No, this isn't what Fodor is saying, as he makes explicit in this video. He doesn't deny that there is a distinction between "selection of" a trait (e.g., there was "selection of" whiteness in polar bears because that trait is a "free rider" to the trait of camouflage in the environments polar bears evolved in). He also doesn't deny that the concept of "selection for" is coherent. (In other words, there's a fact of the matter about which trait was "selected for" -- camouflage, in the case of the polar bears.) What he denies is that the theory of natural selection can make good the distinction between "selection of" and "selection for." The fact that a trait was selected (cashed in for "organisms with the trait displaced organisms without the trait") doesn't provide an explanation for the presence of the trait. He explicitly says in the video that his target is attempts to determine a trait's function or teleology.

Tony, I'm sorry, but that's just really, really wrong philosophy of science. And there I really do know what I'm talking about. Scientific conclusions are always non-deductively obtained. Science is an empirical discipline. Science _always_ involves theory confirmation and disconfirmation. That's part of the reason that we change our minds over time in science.

I suspect we disagree less than you imagine. When we are stating "conclusions" that are in the form of a theoretical model, where the model is a kind of mental abstraction that "explains" a large number of facets of the empirically identified data, then yes, I agree with you. The model is never conclusively proven deductively, because the model is an abstraction and normally it is impossible to prove deductively that there is no other model that would also account for the same data (and because the model never accounts for ALL POSSIBLE data, it is inherently incomplete).

But a scientific conclusion that states the invalidity of a previous theory T is not subject to the same problem: if theory T predicts X, and empirically not-X is shown, then the logical deduction that theory T is invalid is a perfectly sound deduction. That's a scientific conclusion, and it is deductively established. (The experiment doesn't state the deduction, the experiment is just the observed experience of not-X. It takes the deductive scientist to draw out from that event the conclusion "theory T is invalid.")

It is not that science is empirical (alone) and math is deductive, and never the twain shall mix. That's not realistic, its a bad theory of the crafts of knowing: math deductions are deductions about quantitative aspects of reality abstracted from the real world, and thus the conclusions obtained have a derivative meaning for the real world. Science is empirical by way of testing and experimenting with actual events, but science uses rigorous deductions about the empirical data in some cases, even while it speaks by way of induction and with limited certitude in developing the model that explains the data in other cases. Rigorous deduction is not foreign to empirical science, nor does math fail to be about reality.

Well, Tony, I'm afraid that's just a hypothetico-deductive model of scientific theory-testing that has turned out to be incorrect again and again. Without going on and on, the bottom line is that there is no such thing as a probabilistic version of modus tollens. Moreover, to say that scientific theories predict things is only a useful manner of speaking. You can get the entailment of predictions only with auxiliary hypotheses, and it might turn out that your auxiliaries are wrong. The more accurate statement is that various theories predict things *to varying degrees*--more or less strongly.

To the extent that one adopts a hypothetico-deductive approach, Darwinism should be rejected. That hypothetico-deductivism is wrong as a philosophy of science is in one sense the salvation of the Darwinian, because he can always hold out hope that it will turn out that his theory hasn't been falsified after all, despite the fact that what we have has low probability given his theory.

Scientific theories are to be compared for their explanatory power. The power of design as an hypothesis about the origin of biological entities and systems is *enormously* greater than that of theories that involve no design beyond the background of universal law plus chance. Indeed, it is for this reason that those who study cells find themselves continually engaging in reverse engineering, computer language, and other design-steeped ways of thinking just in order to understand the entities they are interested in.

I apologize: I was only trying to be moderately insulting, not completely insulting.

As for your wondering why I'm calling you an evolutionist, again I have to apologize. I thought you already knew.

George, you have used up any margin of grace, and are now digging your hole deeper...as I am sure you are quite well aware, unless you are even denser than Dawkins and wish to use that as your excuse for bad behavior. What you should have meant was "I apologize for calling you an evolutionist without adequate evidence of that."

Why don't you, just for a change, try interacting on this page by paying more attention to the actual substance of the discussion than ad-hominem and name-calling attacks on those whom you don't find agree with you immediately.

If you happen to have learned how to read, you will note that the punctuation of the last sentence does not indicate a question. It is not one. If you wish to engage me, engage only the substance of my comments about Behe's proposals, science, and evidential support for scientific conclusions.

Scientific theories are to be compared for their explanatory power. The power of design as an hypothesis about the origin of biological entities and systems is *enormously* greater than that of theories that involve no design beyond the background of universal law plus chance.

Does a "better" explanation of a smaller-scale theory have "more explanatory power" than a weaker explanation of a larger-scale theory? Behe's thesis may be a qualitatively better explanation of a subset of the origins problems, but so far it has only a very modest development of interconnections with the huge range of other biological science partial models. When it has developed such interconnectedness, it will become a very powerful explanation indeed. But that is not yet. It is readily possible to have a theory that is better than Darwinism for origins and still not be a really robust, well-established theory. My thesis is not that Darwinism is a better model than Behe's, it is that Behe still has lots of work to do before he can call his thesis a robust, well-established theory. That should not be surprising, it is still in its infancy as a thesis. I would not be surprised if he is so side-tracked into defending his thesis from political and ideological attacks that he has little time to really dig into the science any more.

First of all, I don't see any reason to have to wait for you to call yourself an evolutionist before I can call you one. Perhaps you wish, for some reason, to avoid the label, and so you never come out expressly for evolution. Perhaps, it may even be true that you are not convinced that evolution is true. Nevertheless, I think that I am justified in calling you an evolutionist, because sometimes, Tony, you (and I mean you, Tony) have to choose sides. Some things either compel assent, or they are opposed, no in between ("He who is not with me is against me"). The evidence for design in nature is one of those things.

The reason for this is that the evidence is so overwhelming for design in nature, and so completely lacking for the alternative thesis (i.e., the brilliantly clever theory that everything just happened for no reason) that even to put them on the same plane is to do great injustice to the former, and to positively promote the latter. There's no neutral position here. It's like those people who take an "even-handed" position with respect to Hamas terrorists and the women and children they attempt to butcher. They're not neutral: they hate the Jews, and they're with the terrorists.

Now let's take the argument you made against Behe. You take his 37-step process of blood clotting, which he reasonably argues is irreducibly complex, and you deny that it is necessarily evidence of anything because part of it might have been borrowed from a 9-step process belonging to a completely different animal. And you consider yourself justified in presenting this pathetic quibble on the grounds that bacteria and viruses borrow DNA from each other. Bacteria and viruses? First of all, Tony, humans, horses, and dolphins are not viruses. They don't go around trading their DNA with one another. They keep their own DNA and blood-clotting systems to themselves for their own use. Therefore, I submit that Behe's argument compels at least provisional consent, and the fact that you refuse to give it and instead feel compelled to cook up some screwball animals-are-just-like-big-viruses theory shows that you are with the Darwinists - and that you are an evolutionist.

George, you are ignorant, offensive, and can't read. You are boorish, unable to see distinctions that smack you right in the face, and unable to string a simple syllogism together, much less a lengthy argument.

But enough about your better qualities, let's tackle the central point: you're massively wrong. You are wrong in almost every single sentence above. You mis-construe virtually every comment I wrote here, going after straw men and nonsense that NOBODY thinks, much less anyone here. Your comment is deserving of being deleted simply because reading it lessens the reader's IQ - writing it must have purged the last 3 points on your IQ, and then put you into negative territory. The only valid thing you had to say was this partial sentence:

Does a "better" explanation of a smaller-scale theory have "more explanatory power" than a weaker explanation of a larger-scale theory?

Not quite sure what this means, Tony. Explanations and theories are terms at the same level. What they explain are facts, evidence, etc.

so far it has only a very modest development of interconnections with the huge range of other biological science partial models

Not quite sure what the criticism is supposed to be, here. Biological models, as I would understand that phrase, are models of the *way things are*. As a matter of fact, design theory generally (not necessarily some one thing Behe has said but the notion that these things were designed) has _enormous_ connections with "biological models." As Deuce said above, and as I emphasized as well, it's nearly impossible even to _talk_ about DNA, cellular structures, etc., without talking about "for-ness." You may be familiar with Scott Minnich's discussions of reverse engineering in biochemistry. I've listened to Scott talk about this stuff in person, and it's absolutely fascinating. Years before the Dover trial, I urged Scott to write some of it up. He was somewhat discouraged. He said something like, "These biochemists are like fish swimming in water. They can't see the water because it's all around them." The "water" in this case was *design thinking*, which is ubiquitous in the area in which Minnich works.

So as far as that goes, design thinking is, in fact, _deeply_ interconnected to biological models.

Now if, on the other hand, by "biological models" you mean "models of chance processes that some scientists think might have at one time helped evolution along," I can't for the life of me see why design theory needs to be somehow interconnected with these "partial models." They are, after all, highly conjectural attempts to *get along without design* while still guessing how the biological entities we have might have come about! As such, they are to a large extent irrelevant once one gives up that (hopeless) attempt, and someone willing to accept design doesn't owe them anything.

Perhaps what you mean is that a design theorist needs to say *exactly how often* a designer had to intervene or guide the process and *exactly when* he relied on lateral gene transfer, co-option, or random mutation. But why should that be the case? If that's the criticism, it seems to me, you are creating a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" set of demands. On the one hand, you are concerned about too much conjecture. But when design theorists stick to saying, "Look: whatever else we can say, we can say with *high confidence* that this structure was not simply the result of non-intelligent processes," you fault them for not going into great (and, necessarily, fairly conjectural) detail about exactly what design actions took place and exactly how much of the origin of the structure was the result of natural processes. Such conjectures can be made. As I mentioned above, Vincent Torley (who is a philosopher, not, I believe, a scientist, but a darned smart guy) does quite a good job of that sort of thing, and I applaud him for sticking his neck out. But _that's_ the conjecture. That design had to be very significantly involved in the origin of these entities is not merely a conjecture but an extremely well-supported empirical conclusion!

First of all, Tony, humans, horses, and dolphins are not viruses. They don't go around trading their DNA with one another. They keep their own DNA and blood-clotting systems to themselves for their own use.

Isn't this false given horizontal gene transfer? My understanding - and I could be wrong - is that while it's vastly more prevalent in bacteria, etc, it's not unheard of in humans?

George, you are ignorant, offensive, and can't read. You are boorish, unable to see distinctions that smack you right in the face, and unable to string a simple syllogism together, much less a lengthy argument.

Lydia, suppose I have a theory of how the v-6 gasoline engine works, and it is limited to just that version of engine, but is a really strong theory for that system. Suppose Bob has a theory of how engines work - gas, diesel, steam, and so on, but is not so strong as a theory. My question was: which one has more explanatory power, mine or Bob's? A strong theory of a narrow system, or a weak theory of a broad system?

Behe's thesis is about design in nature, but his THEORY, as a scientific theory, is strictly about the design that is indicated within irreducibly complex bio systems in individual species. It is not, for example, a theory about the design features that may show up in an integrated ecology, which is a whole nother order of argument. It is also NOT a theory that design is directly (rather than indirectly) responsible for ALL complex systems in a given species. As a theory, it proposes avenues in which we could explore tons of new relationships between things caused directly by a designer and things not cause directly - but none of that has been explored yet. Nor does it propose any solution about whether the designer used purely miraculous immaterial methods to effect new species, or might he have used in addition other mechanisms that may have left traces. All that is to be expected of a young thesis.

I have no problem thinking that a God was directly active in forming the wealth of species. Since I believe in species, as an Aristotelian, I have a philosophical predisposition to thinking that Darwinians got off on the wrong foot altogether. But thinking that we can readily expect to find that God (or any designer) had a direct hand is NOT the same as a stating a scientific theory that the designer's direct hand is scientifically definitive at these points a, b, and c. To make that conclusion, you need to be able to say more than "we cannot imagine a natural method of achieving a this process A." You need to also be able to say that we have a pretty decent understanding for what kinds of methods (natural or not) are capable of producing complex systems (irreducible or not), and as a result we understand why there won't be found a natural method for achieving that complex system A. My feeling is that Behe is a little too close to saying "we cannot imagine" and not quite close enough to saying "we understand".

If you took Henry VIII, and told him that we can hear someone's voice from 240,000 miles away even though there is no air to carry the sound, he might well have said "I cannot imagine how such a thing can come about with natural means, it sounds like something beyond the natural." But a careful scientist must learn to distinguish between "so far we have no clue how such a thing can be done in nature" and "we can see clearly that such a thing cannot be done naturally." If a scientist cannot distinguish these, then he cannot tell the difference between a miracle and a mere puzzle. This would mean that the atheists are right about miracles - they are merely the things we have not yet explained. What I am saying is that Behe sounds, to me, a little too quick to say "no natural process can do this" because he doesn't imagine a way nature could do it, and has more work to get to "we understand clearly why no natural process can do this".

For example, just what is the minimum required number of steps for an irreducibly complex step-by-step system before it can be the basis for a "cannot be done by nature" conclusion? We simply don't know. We know it is not 2, but beyond that we are unsure. It might be as low as 3 or 4, it might be as much as 15, because we have more work to do in understanding what kinds of complexity natural systems ARE capable of producing without direct designing intervention. If Behe had chosen as one of his examples a system that uses 7 steps, and it was later discovered a natural process (without designer) that can produce a 7-step system that requires all 7 steps before it works at all, would Behe's theory fall apart completely? Well, not really, because his theory hasn't yet tried to establish a base-line minimum for complex step systems that prove the point. He would have to throw that example out, as an instance of the theory, though. But he needs more science investigation about what kinds of complexity can be produced by what kinds of causes.

Sorry, all, but I've simply been overwhelmed. Between finals week and my impending trip to Naples and Sicily, I've had little time to keep up around here.

Tony - please don't sweat George R. I think he'd probably like to see me toast in the eternal bonfire, but I value him as a commenter - just as I'd value any smart jihadist who cared enough to participate here.

Nor does it propose any solution about whether the designer used purely miraculous immaterial methods to effect new species, or might he have used in addition other mechanisms that may have left traces.

That's pretty vague. It seems a little odd to fault someone else's theory for not proposing a "solution" to something that exists (these "other mechanisms that may have left traces") only as a non-specific conjecture of a possibility that you are bringing up!

To make that conclusion, you need to be able to say more than "we cannot imagine a natural method of achieving a this process A." You need to also be able to say that we have a pretty decent understanding for what kinds of methods (natural or not) are capable of producing complex systems (irreducible or not), and as a result we understand why there won't be found a natural method for achieving that complex system A.

He does say more than that. He talks specifically about Darwinian mechanisms and about why these are highly unlikely to have produced these results. Moreover, in my opinion this needs to be construed as a comparative inference. The enormous power of design is in the engineered-like, machine-like, or computer code-like nature of these organismal designs. This is what makes design an overwhelmingly better explanation. Seriously: think how silly it would look for "scientists" hundreds of years down the line to say parallel things about the very existence of Microsoft Windows! "I'm afraid Dr. So-and-so hasn't said enough about what kinds of methods, natural or not, are capable of producing what we call 'computer programs' and therefore hasn't told us enough for us really to _understand_ why there won't be found a completely non-intelligent mechanism by which Microsoft Windows originally simply sprang forth."

Moreover, moreover, Behe isn't at all the only person who works in this area. Steve Meyer has talked till he's blue in the face about the nature of information and about why it is unlikely that non-intelligent mechanisms will bring about information.

For example, just what is the minimum required number of steps for an irreducibly complex step-by-step system before it can be the basis for a "cannot be done by nature" conclusion?

Again, you're working with this strange, deductive view of scientific inference. Even a simple mousetrap is _quite unlikely_ to have developed accidentally. But obviously, the more parts there are to the machine, the more improbable it gets, until we're talking about pretty wild improbabilities--as in the DNA code, the intracellular transport system, the cell itself, and on and on and on. As I said before, I believe Behe is far too modest and that systems and entities that exhibit the property he was discussing are _ubiquitous_ in biology and exist nested within one another. There isn't some magic cut-off number: "I have a scientific theory that tells me that it is literally, logically impossible for this to have developed non-intelligently if it has *exactly this many* steps." That's just a confused view of science. But as the machines get more and more complex, the comparative advantage of the design hypothesis, which postulates an intelligent being able to think of the thing *as a whole* and bring the parts together *for the purpose he has in mind* becomes enormous.

If anyone has access to Professor Feser's book Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide, Ed deals with the question of attempts to get rid of teleology by Darwinian evolutionists on pages 44-47. I highly recommend Ed's book -- I'm just making my way though it now.

Lydia, I think the reason your "function" ghost stories are so scary is that they're so improbable. Not the part about evolving to walk on our hands; rather, the apparent implication that our hands will then continue to look the way they do, rather than evolving to look more like feet. If they did come to look like feet, and we said that the function of "hands" is to walk on, would it really be so scary? I think it would be more of an etymological curiosity.

In fact, biological functions do change, for a common-sense meaning of "function." Stephen Jay Gould used to emphasize that fact in his argument against intelligent design proponents: natural selection often uses existing stuff for brand new functions. Therefore, the post-hoc-ness in the non-teleological definition of "function" is a feature, not a bug. (I mean the explanatory definition that "feet exist because we can walk on them," not the trivial definition that "feet walk.") I'd suggest that any definition that does not somehow take the history into account is deficient. "Nothing that has a history can be defined."

Deuce asks, "Why all the persistent, supposedly misleading teleological language throughout biology in the first place?"

Beats me. Why did people used to talk about thunderstorms in terms of angry thunder gods?

It's not clear to me how much teleological talk could not be cashed in. (And will philosophers laugh at me if I continue to say "cashed in" instead of "cashed out"? Do you guys "cash out" your chips in a casino?) I still don't see what's logically wrong with saying that giraffes evolved to have long necks so they could reach leaves. It seems that Fodor approves of that kind of talk, too. Similarly with saying that the function of long necks is to reach leaves, in the historically explanatory sense of "function." All of the teleological implications can be cashed in.

For any teleological talk that can't be cashed in, well, I don't take common language as proof of a metaphysics. What we'd have to say then, assuming a non-teleological metaphysics, is that the "explanation" is no explanation at all. But just because we don't know the answer doesn't mean we should use a wrong answer.

Lydia, I think the reason your "function" ghost stories are so scary is that they're so improbable. Not the part about evolving to walk on our hands; rather, the apparent implication that our hands will then continue to look the way they do, rather than evolving to look more like feet. If they did come to look like feet, and we said that the function of "hands" is to walk on, would it really be so scary? I think it would be more of an etymological curiosity.

Aaron, I don't think these examples are "scary." What the examples are supposed to show is that on a post hoc radical reinterpretation of "function," function becomes indeterminate, so that it is no longer straightforwardly true that some organ has or does not have a particular function. I thought I made that clear. It seems to me quite obvious that a post-hoc definition of "function" is highly counterintuitive, philosophically speaking.

"Scary" was my metaphor for "counter-intuitive." To emphasize: I think any reasonable definition of "function" has to be post hoc to some extent, because functions sometimes evolve over time.

Another point that I think is uncontroversial is that some functions evolve by natural selection, for instance in the laboratory. Therefore, there are some functions that arose non-teleologically. Or, if you deny that possibility, then you're only able to determine whether something's a function by determining whether it was designed or spontaneously evolved. Since structural relations can't always tell you that, even in principle, you're back to history!

Even if some enzyme was intelligently-designed to do a certain thing (and therefore has that function), it might later evolve by natural selection to perform a different function, no longer performing the original function at all. Don't we have to say that the function changed? Or do we have to say that it evolved to behave contrary to its function? If we're allowed to say that its function changed, then how can we determine its new (non-teleological) function without considering the history?

He talks specifically about Darwinian mechanisms and about why these are highly unlikely to have produced these results. Moreover, in my opinion this needs to be construed as a comparative inference. The enormous power of design is in the engineered-like, machine-like, or computer code-like nature of these organismal designs. This is what makes design an overwhelmingly better explanation...

But if I have already discounted Darwinism as satisfactory, a comparative "better" explanation automatically loses much of its oomph. Yes, yes, it is far more likely than little green men. Any 5% likely argument likely is also far more likely than little green men, and I don't grant immense weight to a 5% likely explanation.

Darwin's mechanism being shown highly unlikely leaves the door open to alternatives, but that doesn't force the scientist to land his adherence to one specific alternative. A good alternative gets the scientist interested and hopeful, and eventually when it holds up to a lot of different tests and explorations, he gives it a stronger measure of credence. We are still in that working out period.

"I have a scientific theory that tells me that it is literally, logically impossible for this to have developed non-intelligently if it has *exactly this many* steps."

Sorry, I must not have explained my point properly. This is exactly NOT the kind of thing I think is needed. I was working the idea of a "least possible" boundary necessary for the argument below which the argument simply doesn't fly, not at a definite tipping point that changes the conclusion from "unlikely" to "likely".

You accept that this particular conclusion (nature unaided cannot produce this complex series) is not going to be a rigorously deduced conclusion from empirically, and definitively, known premises. The conclusion is, then, either inductive, or "reasonable but not certain," where "certain" is the maximum type of affirmation possible to that science (which can be greater in math and less in biology). I don't know exactly why you think that the latter type of conclusion shouldn't be considered a form of probability reasoning, but it DOES fall into the broader category of probable argument. By definition, a probable argument is the sort of argument that reasonable people are allowed to hold with greater or lesser adherence, depending on their experience and their personal perspective on the varying weights of a mass of indeterminate imperfect evidences.

Behe's (and generally, ID's) thesis isn't that a designer is directly responsible for ALL genetic and biological variation: some of the variation comes about in natural processes that don't involve a designer acting directly. (We have fairly substantial direct evidence of mutations causing genetic changes in current cases.) The theory is only that a designer is present in some cases.

In terms of the "too complex" part of the argument, we are working with amorphous "more" and "less" probable sorts of explanations for the complex system. There will be a fall-off of intensity of reasonableness (trying to avoid using terms that lend an appearance of measuring probability, because we are not even slightly claiming to be able to measure that) for Darwin's approach as the number of steps increases - except that certain other factors can mitigate or even unwind this fall-off of reasonability. A well-developed theory will be able to categorize the important factors, and say something useful about how they affect the argument, and create a wealth of understanding enabling us to _intelligently_ assess the presence or absence of factors in given case. Each specific type of example may need more or fewer steps to create enough basis for a "reasonable" conclusion, given the surrounding factors that weigh in but do not definitively settle the matter. There might be, then, a class of cases where (because of additional factors) nobody would begin to be satisfied that the complexity is "too much" for Darwinian chance to explain at only 5 steps, and another class of cases where the argument isn't even interesting unless there are at least 9 or 10 steps. When we have a stable basis for suggesting (even if not with certainty) that there are 3 (4, 20?) classes, and in class 2, you cannot reasonably propose a designer acted in producing this complex system with less than 6 steps (a lower bound, not a definite tipping point), then we'll be somewhere. THAT is what it will look like when it is a well-developed model for explaining the bio diversity.

We are so far away from such a state. Right now, Behe has not even laid out a proposed standard in ONE case for being able to say, for example, "If this were merely 5 steps I wouldn't call it an example for my thesis, and here's why..." I think our science about the matter is much like Ptolemy's astronomy, with a fantastic amount of data (given lack of telescopes), and an incredibly detailed, darn nifty explanation of orbits of planets, but there were just a few assumptions built in that seemed very reasonable without being quite sufficiently grounded to constitute a fully scientific set of conclusions. Some of his assumptions he knew he was assuming, and others he was unaware of, but colored his approach. Please tell me that if I were an astronomer alive in 500, I would be "required" to give assent to Ptolemy's theory even though I could see his assumptions were just that, assumptions, and I felt that they weren't as weighty as he did?

But if I have already discounted Darwinism as satisfactory, a comparative "better" explanation automatically loses much of its oomph.

Let me be a little clearer. Though I began that paragraph talking about Darwinian explanations, I will clarify to say this: Design is an overwhelmingly better explanation of the existence of these types of information-rich structures than *any non-intelligent explanation*, no matter what name you give to it. I certainly agree that when self-identified Darwinians start telling us (as they are now) that natural selection really isn't the big driver of their machine, that massive lateral gene transfer happening we-know-not-why (or perhaps the tooth fairy) is the real engine behind it, they should have the honesty to abandon the term "Darwinism" and probably even the term "evolution." But whatever we call them, if these are posited to be definitely non-intelligent processes, in my opinion they are just non-starters from a rational point of view, given the nature of the outcomes.

Tony, it seems to me that you are demanding something I addressed above--namely, that design cannot be a "well-developed theory" and hence apparently cannot command the rational assent of reasonable men (if I'm understanding you correctly) unless it tells us details like how many design events there were, just where a designer used natural processes, and so forth. Now, in my opinion, that sort of a detailed theory will not be more powerful than the basic conclusion that these entities were designed by an intelligent agent but rather will contain a lot more conjecture, possibly very interesting, but far less well-supported than the basic thesis of the theory. (Darwinians say something similar about Darwinism itself--that the details may vary in different people's conjectural accounts but that the basic "fact of evolution" is overwhelmingly supported. There's nothing wrong with such a general type of claim. They just happen to be wrong. Similarly one could say that we know with enormous confidence that Caesar was assassinated in the forum but aren't exactly sure which conspirator approached him first.)

I addressed this type of demand above and can't do much better than to repeat myself:

Perhaps what you mean is that a design theorist needs to say *exactly how often* a designer had to intervene or guide the process and *exactly when* he relied on lateral gene transfer, co-option, or random mutation. But why should that be the case? If that's the criticism, it seems to me, you are creating a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" set of demands. On the one hand, you are concerned about too much conjecture. But when design theorists stick to saying, "Look: whatever else we can say, we can say with *high confidence* that this structure was not simply the result of non-intelligent processes," you fault them for not going into great (and, necessarily, fairly conjectural) detail about exactly what design actions took place and exactly how much of the origin of the structure was the result of natural processes. Such conjectures can be made. As I mentioned above, Vincent Torley (who is a philosopher, not, I believe, a scientist, but a darned smart guy) does quite a good job of that sort of thing, and I applaud him for sticking his neck out. But _that's_ the conjecture. That design had to be very significantly involved in the origin of these entities is not merely a conjecture but an extremely well-supported empirical conclusion!

As you probably know, Tony, Behe did an interesting follow-up book called _The Edge of Evolution_ in which he used the mutation for sickle cell anemia as a model for a beneficial genetic mutation that seems to have developed at random. He did some interesting calculations there, but to my mind, the _weakness_ of the book was precisely that it was trying to do what you are demanding in terms of detail.

I would have rather seen a DBB II in which he gave us more examples of irreducibly complex systems, including some at higher levels of organization, such as organs and/or organ systems. Because frankly, once you start seeing their ubiquity, the evidence just comes down like an avalanche. The existence of male and female animals alone is something that non-intelligent models are pathetic at trying to explain.

Tony, I'm going to be very honest with you: As far as what's actually true, I suspect that the ID writers have mostly been underestimating the involvement of design, possibly in order to avoid criticisms that they are overstating their case. (Then, the critics like yourself come along and imply that, because their theory is insufficiently "well-developed," it isn't strong enough that reasonable people ought to accept it!) My own very strong guess at this point, from the evidence I know just as a layman (so take it FWIW) is that something very nearly like special creation of the majority of species is simply _true_, on a progressive creation model. That is to say, that God literally created new species de novo after gaps of time (sometimes quite large gaps) in which the previously created species existed, mutated _some_ but not dramatically, sometimes died out, etc. My guess is that many of the similarities between and among species are a result of similar design model ideas, rather like the fact that your toaster and your oven both contain heating elements and electric wires, but neither evolved from the other. Others may just be convergent mutations, such as the vitamin C pseudogene in humans and guinea pigs (which is what evolutionists think too, btw, but don't want to say about chimps). The whole "tree of life" model is being questioned by naturalists themselves, though naturally the insistence is that nevertheless nothing has changed.

Now, if I'm right about that, then detailed conjectures that this number-of-steps cascade or this entity containing x parts interconnected _could_ have developed just by lucky chance are going to be worthless as far as discovering the truth, just as it would be if someone walked around your house and picked a few of the relatively less complicated things (maybe some plastic toy belonging to a young child, or a cup) and hopefully suggested that these are simple enough that they _might_ have developed by accidents in a plastic factory without intelligent intention. The way it's looking to me right now, the "developed theory" you're demanding is really just saying, "Tell us just how far we might be able to get without intelligent design or I won't have much confidence in intelligent design as a general theory of the origins of biological structures," which sounds like a _massive_ case of missing the forest for the trees or ignoring the elephant in the room, or some other similar metaphor.

That is to say, that God literally created new species de novo after gaps of time (sometimes quite large gaps) in which the previously created species existed, mutated _some_ but not dramatically, sometimes died out, etc.

Ever since I understood Aristotle's form-matter analysis, this is just what I considered the leading candidate to meet both the philosophical requirements and the data that is available. An agent higher than the species is called for in producing a new species. Why are we arguing? Oh, yeah: because I think that we may conclude that our current notion of the multitude of "different" species is bogus, we may find out that all the cats are, essentially, just cats, not lions and tigers and leopards as distinct species. That all the deer are just deer, not whitetail, mule, elk, carribou, as different species. Therefore, I am willing to leave plenty of room for genetic drift within species to account for these variations, without any direct designer imposition.

Now, if I'm right about that, then detailed conjectures that this number-of-steps cascade or this entity containing x parts interconnected _could_ have developed just by lucky chance are going to be worthless as far as discovering the truth,

But if I am right that there is plenty of genetic variation within species, then there may still be plenty of room for figuring natural mechanisms of biological variance without resorting to direct action by a designer as the source of variation. A designer may be needed for new species, but not for variation within a species.

that design cannot be a "well-developed theory" and hence apparently cannot command the rational assent of reasonable men (if I'm understanding you correctly) unless it tells us details like how many design events there were, just where a designer used natural processes, and so forth.

Modern atomic theory started with a thesis: matter is made of corpuscular entities, and is not continuous. A thesis, though, is not a theory. It becomes a full blown theory when it manages to fit the thesis into a pattern in which it explains the fit of the thesis in with many, many different examples and situations. There have been at least 2 distinct atomic theories over time, and the first one was, simply, wrong. Democritus thought that atoms had to be infinitely small, and each one had a basic shape, (round, hook-shaped, etc). We know this is wrong, atoms cannot be infinitely small. The fact that there is now an atomic theory that justly commands our very strong respect and adherence does not mean that the first time the thesis of atoms was put forward, the theory that explained it was a good theory. The later atomic theory with much more detailed information and experimentation is a completely different theory, though it has the same basic thesis. Dalton and Avogadro and their later colleagues were justified in looking closely at a new atomic theory, but until a great deal of work had been done over several decades, their fellow chemists were also justified in withholding the kind of firm assent that the theory now justifies. In the passage from the _beginnings_ of a good theory to a firmly established theory, men can reasonably assent to the theory in differing ways, with differing levels of adherence. Dalton got the basic idea right, but major adjustments had to be made to his concept before it could explain the wealth of data that eventually was brought to bear. Was it wrong for those who came immediately after Dalton to insist on refining the theory? Of course not. And as they refined it, they found that some of Dalton's notions had to be jettisoned, so they ended up adhering to parts of his theory and not to the whole theory, while engraving the basic thesis ever more firmly on the map.

I think Behe is now roughly where Dalton was then, or maybe a bit further along. Somehow, you seem certain he sits much closer to where Niels Bohr sat in explaining chemistry. This is essentially a matter of opinion, and it can't be resolved for who was "right" or "wrong" until after the fact. If you think that ID theory will in 60 years look almost identical (at least in all critical elements) to the way ID does now, you have a lot more confidence in it's current formulation than I can muster. The irreducible complexity version of ID is not a mature scientific theory yet.

because I think that we may conclude that our current notion of the multitude of "different" species is bogus, we may find out that all the cats are, essentially, just cats, not lions and tigers and leopards as distinct species. That all the deer are just deer, not whitetail, mule, elk, carribou, as different species.

I'm totally open to that as well, but it's not like there are millions of years (AFAIK) in between elk and caribou! And as for humans and apes...well...yeah, they're different species, not just variants.

Btw, though, I once put that conjecture (I believe I used some term like "ur-cat" or "ur-bear" or something like that, very much like you're saying) to a person much more knowledgeable than I, and he pointed out the relevant embryological fact that scientists aren't having much luck with cross-breeding for fertile young even across what one might think of as fairly "near" species lines. And as for crossing further distant species, such as would have to have evolved from a common ancestor for anything *remotely like* the Darwinian picture to be true--nuthin'. You can't get a living embryo at all. This is, at least, a relevant point as far as biological "relatedness" goes.

Here's an interesting challenge, Tony: Are there any complex, multi-part systems, good candidates for irreducibly complex systems or structures, that lions have that tigers don't, that elk have that whitetail don't, etc., among your examples? I'm betting it's going to be darned hard to find any. We're talking about mammals in all cases, animals that all have all the really interesting stuff--mammalian nervous system, brain, sexual reproductive system, blood-clotting, vision, cardio-vascular, respiratory, digestive system, cells, tissue types, etc. The herbivores have an ability to digest stuff that the carnivores don't, but you weren't raising as a plausible possibility that one of those types was descended by purely natural processes from the other.

"The mammalian reproductive system" is "the same" only by way of overlooking the varieties and differences.

Just as one example, most mammalian species, such as dogs/wolves and the ape species, have a 'baculum'; other species, such as humans and horses, do not. Plus, there is great variety in the baculum from species to species. Also, many, if not most, mammaliam species, including the primates, have a single 'corpora cavernosa penis', whereas humans, supposedly also primates, have two.

Btw, though, I once put that conjecture (I believe I used some term like "ur-cat" or "ur-bear" or something like that, very much like you're saying) to a person much more knowledgeable than I, and he pointed out the relevant embryological fact that scientists aren't having much luck with cross-breeding for fertile young even across what one might think of as fairly "near" species lines.

Lydia, I am aware of the problem. I am not at all sure whether it constitutes a definitive barrier.

Lions and tigers can be bred together in captivity, yielding ligers and tigons. From the amateur data I can collect, it seems difficult to establish that either hybrid is truly fertile. This is the the usual requirement, I think, for saying the two are in the same species. (E.G. horses and donkeys breed mules, and mules are sterile, so horses and donkeys are not the same species.) I am not sure how scientists came to that conclusion, it always seemed odd to me, because it seems to me that the mere fact that the two breed offspring _at all_ is stronger evidence that they are the same species than the fact that the offspring is sterile is evidence against it.

With an Aristotelian view of species and natures, I believe that it is a virtual impossibility to explain 2 animals of different species having ANY offspring whatsoever. Their natures are not consistent with generation with another species. Within a species, however, it is possible that a variation in details makes offspring impossible, even though they are clearly the same species. Isn't it possible that we could run across 2 variants of dog that cannot be bred? If the genes that make a dog a great pyrenees simply are not compatible with the genes that make another dog a chihuahua, then they won't breed even though both are dogs. Coyotes, dogs, and wolves can all interbreed, (they all have 38 chromosomes, for starters) but that doesn't mean that all variants can. The fact that scientists are having trouble breeding across some close species lines is suggestive, but until they can explain the oddity in their theory that permits ANY breeding across "different species", they are going to have problems with the theory anyway.

Not all mammals have the complex blood clotting process that humans have, it's actually pretty close to unique. But that's not much of a telling point, as we both agree that humans required direct intervention by God in any case.

Here's an interesting challenge, Tony: Are there any complex, multi-part systems, good candidates for irreducibly complex systems or structures, that lions have that tigers don't, that elk have that whitetail don't, etc., among your examples?

That's an excellent question. I really don't know the answer to it. Are there any candidates for "complex" systems (regardless of notional irreducibility) that are in one and not in the other? Again, I don't know. But given that ID has only been on the market for 20 years, and has been defending itself from politics and bias most of that time, it may be that ID may not even have gotten around to asking the question, or taking any thorough effort to answer it.

I posted last night after you gave us your update -- I'm jealous of your upcoming trip. I especially want to go to Sicily someday since my maternal grandmother is from the island.

Lydia,

I thought of this combox thread today as I was flipping through the cable channels I stumbled across a show on the History channel called "History of the World in Two Hours". What is so gob-smacking crazy is to watch the palaeontologists and biologists being interviewed for the show casually describing the evolution of single celled organisms (who knows where these things came from, but ignore that for now) into complex multi-cell organisms and then after a couple of hundred million years, fish, amphibians, and then reptiles (which are crucial to human evolution because of the egg). Now, all of this might be the "way it happened" but what's so crazy is the way they talk as if they were there 3-4 billion years ago and that this process they describe is just "settled science". I never noticed this kind of bait and switch before I started hanging out with true skeptics and lovers of knowledge :-)

One can actually do the math on adaptive traits and see how if series of genes (manifest as a trait) give a survival advantage of 10%, over many generations these genes would be passed on. There's a great primer on this in the first chapter or two of the 10,000 Year Explosion.

As I've noted before, I've become convinced that the entire anti-Darwin religious right crowd is but a form of (perhaps unintentionally) Cultural Marxism. It's quite telling that many of the neocons opposed evolution even back when they were Trotskyites (because it "leads to fascism") and that the Discovery Institute website is full of articles claiming "evolution is racist."

Auster doesn't fall into this crowd and, I think, sincerely believes what he says, but he is wrong. Neo-Darwinism does capture reality. The evidence is overwhelming to the sober observer.

But since the religious fundamentalists have little power, the real show to watch will be the rise of "liberal creationism," the secular-religious claim that all humans MUST be the same in ability. Leftists are perhaps even more terrified of the inegalitarian aspects of Darwinism.

One can actually do the math on adaptive traits and see how if series of genes (manifest as a trait) give a survival advantage of 10%, over many generations these genes would be passed on. There's a great primer on this in the first chapter or two of the 10,000 Year Explosion.

So, if a trait (whether directly genetic based, or say, chromosomal based) gives, say, a 10% disadvantage to 'differential reproductive success', it would, over some number of generations, die out, leaving no progeny possessing the trait?

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